This week community contention around the use of one of Melbourne’s most beloved parks came to a head. A small group of local residents took their concerns about the purported bacchanalia unfolding at Edinburgh Gardens since lockdowns eased to the council. Then more than 2,000 park-users signed a petition insisting the city of Yarra reject any call for an outright booze ban. Alcohol is already banned in the gardens after 9pm.
On 15 December, the council – which last month became Australia’s first Greens-majority council – unanimously voted down the residents’ proposal, considering more cleaning and toilets instead. Melbourne’s extraordinary lockdown success is cause for much (socially distanced) celebration, putting public green space at a premium. As we relish our hard-earned Covid-normal summer in these shared spaces, let’s consider why our parks exist at all.
Spawn of the parks movement that began nearly 200 years ago in England, parks like Edinburgh Gardens in Fitzroy North are in fact purpose-built oases designed to counter the ills of urban living. Birkenhead, the world’s first free-access public recreational garden was opened just outside Liverpool in 1847 as both a gesture of municipal egalitarianism and an antidote to the pathogenic living conditions suffered by a new urban underclass. The movement soon hopped the Atlantic, with Central and Prospect parks in New York opening in the 1850s, around the same time it caught on in Australia.
In 1862, Fitzroy councillors picked out 50 swampy acres of unceded Wurundjeri land, littered with billabongs and trees, and set about transforming it into a manicured leisure park. In 1867 when Queen Victoria’s son the Duke of Edinburugh narrowly missed an assassination attempt while visiting Australia, the city of Fitzroy offered a namesake park by way of apology. Two centuries later, parks still figure strongly in the daily life of city dwellers. They’re healthful sanctuaries with well-documented benefits to both individuals and communities, and as 2020 dished up fresh and compounding imperilments to our minds and bodies, our parks came to the rescue. While the pandemic has certainly been no walk in the park, we’ve sure been taking a lot of them.
On the first Sunday out of stage 4 restrictions, I strolled through Edinburgh Gardens. The long-abandoned bocce pitch was alive once more. Three men with bicycles and beers were at play. Gregory, Gregory and Joshua, I learned, are members of the “Edi Gardens Petanque Pals”, a casual social group that has been getting together ever since one of the Gregorys found a boules set in the rubbish a few years ago. In their 40s and from the northern suburbs, the men said that during lockdown they’d been using the space for distanced recreation and socialising that supported their mental health.
Such facilities abound, but in the before-times, ripe as they were with an endless stream of diversions and obligations, for many people, a round of ping pong in the park could feel practically monastic. But Melbourne has turned back to its local parks lately – and they delivered.
For four women in their 20s I found reclining on the fence at the skate bowl, this was their first time. They’d travelled from the outer suburbs ready to test their recently acquired rollerskating prowess. Amanda Pecora, 23, said three of them had taken up rollerskating during lockdown – as a form of exercise that was also a social and psychological pick-me-up. It is a benefit long understood by lifelong local Joey Kellock, 43, who has been skateboarding Fitzroy Bowl for 30 years.
These days his visits to the park are more entrepreneurial. On Sundays Kellock offers a guerrilla dining experience along the park’s northern boundary. He’s been stoked to see the park bustling in recent years, especially as we emerge from the winter of our discontent. Kellock says age has tempered his “locals only” attitude and as a “middle-aged dude with a skateboard” he welcomes the carnivalesque atmosphere of the gardens. “It’s a good representation of Melbourne’s cultural evolution – hip, young and open-minded, just living life – I can sit on the sidelines and still feel a part of it.”
The Victorian government will pump $154m into suburban and urban parks in coming years. The creation and revitalisation of the equivalent of 180 Royal Botanic Gardens will offer communities more opportunities to connect in open green space and some respite from our changing climate, especially in developing suburbs on the city’s fringe, the suburban parks project team says. In the inner city, a cool $10m will be directed towards playgrounds, and, mercifully, restrooms. Although we can go to the pub now, travel further and host backyard barbies again, which are of course lovely though hardly universal options.
For the broke, vehicle-less and apartment-dwelling among us, parks have always been the answer; now everyone is in on it. As we look forward to a Covid-normal summer together, things are looking bright for the convivial spaces our parks provide and they’re looking pretty bright for Melbourne too.
